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385 Comments
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -14/+121What really depresses me is the fact that almost nobody shorts Windows or Mac OS X for driver shortcomings, but they're willing to short Linux for it at any chance they get.
That Lexmark combo printer you just bought crapped out while scanning some document thanks to a buggy driver? You will *never* hear "***** you Microsoft", it's always "***** you Lexmark and your ***** printers." The same situation turns around to Linux and it's always "Why doesn't Linux support this? Linux sucks!"
These companies have completely managed to turn the knife around. Instead of you blaming the company for being ridiculous, you blame the Operating System that's written mostly by people with nothing better to do than sit around and try their damnest to support your hardware, no matter how esoteric it may be. You get a guy that writes drivers to support 200+ webcams, and that 251st that doesn't have a Linux driver pops up and all the sudden it's totally Linux's fault, damn those developers.
First of all, it's likely you didn't pay a penny for that developer's time. He or she did most of the work they do out of the goodness of their heart, or out of a lousy salary sitting in the backroom of a corporation with three year old documentation, crappily photocopied from the company's internal documents. Secondly, you're criticizing that developer's work instead of blaming the company who didn't think it was worth their time to develop a driver for the platform you want to use on your machine. I don't want to be too glib, but seriously, these companies chew on the hands that feed them, slice them off with chainsaws, even sue their own customers for trying to make their hardware work better on their platform, or bind them with unreasonable licenses to where they can't release a driver at all.
Boycotting those companies isn't going to work either; it's the majority position to not support Linux, either because Microsoft's paying for them not to, or because they're following in the crowd's footsteps. Instead, we need to call them out on it. Stop blaming Linux for your hardware shortcomings; if Toshiba makes a motherboard that doesn't work with Linux, call up Toshiba with a huffy attitude and talk to a superior as far up as you can complaining the hardware doesn't work. If Dell refuses to ship anything but WinModems, call up Dell and give them hell, then call up Conexant and tell them to ditch the WinModem format, or give Linux a chance to implement their own soft-modem stack.
Lastly, when was the last time any of you people who use Linux day to day actually thanked one of the developers for their hard work? How many of you know the names of the people who wrote the drivers that support your hardware? These people are, for the most part, egomaniacs: they absolutely adore being patted on the head and told they're doing a good job. It makes their job satisfaction go up, which means they work harder for you. We really need to stress this fact more often, and to thank the people who actually give a damn. - WhiteIce89, on 10/10/2007, -14/+53Linux might have better driver support OUT OF THE BOX, but after that, you can't say Linux support is better. My sound card is completely nonfunctional in Linux (not some ancient card either, it's an X-Fi ExtremeMusic), the NVIDIA video card drivers aren't perfect either. The only thing that works "better" in Linux on my PC is my onboard networking controller and that's only because it works out of the box.
- craftyguy, on 10/10/2007, -5/+39Unfortunately it's only true for more 'mature' hardware, try buying a motherboard that was released last month and praying that there is something in the kernel source that will make it function :(
Yes I understand that it is up to the manufacturer to develop 'nix drivers for 'bleeding edge' hardware, but after countless emails to them, I have to complain somewhere... - robitor, on 10/10/2007, -3/+24you obviously don't have an ati card.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -19/+38That's true, even if doesn't seem so. Out of the box Linux support more devices than windows, what happen is that the new hardware is shipped with windows drivers only and the Linux community takes its time to reverse engineering them. Without the drivers that every hardware is shipped with, windows wouldn't recognize a *****.
- ralph123, on 10/10/2007, -4/+21Sending them emails won't help.
Not buying their products will. - postaldave, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18tell that to my broadcom wireless NIC card i bought.
broadcom=the devil - Ramble, on 11/12/2007, -9/+25Linux has more hardware support, but it's generally only for older more esoteric hardware like some random SCSI card. Linux support for newer hardware is frankly ***** compared to Windows and that's why it gets such a bad rap.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+16C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER
- fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -20/+34It's a lie, even if you think it might be true.
What happens is you walk into any computer store, buy any item. When you get home one of two things will happen - Windows will recognize and install the drivers automatically, or you insert the cd that will definitely have Windows drivers on it, click next 2 or 3 times and you're done.
With Linux you walk into any store, ask the kid if it'll work and he won't know. So you take a risk, buy it, go home and go to install it, eventually you post on a forum where you're told you're a ***** idiot for buying XYZ when you should have bought ABC, and that you should go buy ABC.
"Without the drivers that every hardware is shipped with, windows wouldn't recognize a *****."
But with the drivers it's a different story. And it's got the drivers. - geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14If enough people did so yes. But the problem is, Linux adoption is a Catch 22; in order to get it to ship on machines, it's gotta "Just Work" with all of the hardware imaginable these days. In order for Linux to Just Work, it's got to have hardware drivers. Hardware manufacturers aren't willing to pony up the docs to make drivers, so they don't get made and Linux can't get the adoption critical mass it needs.
The smoke cloud around desktop linux is starting to billow bigger and bigger with every release, all we need now is some catalyst to start it ablaze. - WhiteIce89, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14I never said Linux developers are to blame, the fact remains that Linux hardware support is not better, it has worse coverage. I agree that blame is due on the hardware manufacturers.
- EXreaction, on 10/10/2007, -9/+19Yes, lets compare built in driver support for a somewhat newly released OS (I don't track Debian, but I doubt the latest release is very old) to Windows XP, which is about 6 years old now.
Article is BS because if they would have tried Vista it would be completely different, I haven't had a single piece of hardware need drivers for Vista (even my old printer, which I use like once every 6 months worked right away on Vista). Not to mention I haven't found a distro that supports my monitor's NATIVE resolution out of the box, nor works with my MX 1000 decently.
Buried as inaccurate. - carpespasm, on 10/10/2007, -5/+15if you're willing to check into what to get beforhand you can easily pick hardware that works well with linux. but when it comes to high end, newly released hardware it gets murkier. If it's SATA hard drives, linux will spank windows' ability to use them easily. if it's a hot new sound card there's going to be a buffer of a few months while decent drivers are reverse engineered for linux.
- ralph123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10What about NetBSD?
It even runs on toasters:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25321 - geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Actually Linux can fetch drivers from online. In fact, it can fetch the whole damn kernel online.
- fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -6/+15Your CD-ROM is broken.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Or you could blame Lexmark for never writing the driver in the first place. You did them the favor of buying their overpriced flimsy hardware, the least they could do is give out the details on how to allow you to make it work for the platform you choose, or better yet, provide a driver themselves.
..and for the record, Lexmark writes their own Linux drivers in Lexington, Kentucky (though they are subcontracted through another company). Details:
http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_659668505_0_en,00.html - geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -13/+21And it's funny, Linux gets the blame for not having drivers for these devices, when it's really the companies who prevent the drivers from being created in the first place. There are people out there willing to write, review and document drivers for your hardware FOR FREE if you give them the details they need to do it, that's how ass backwards the whole situation is.
So, how about instead of saying "Linux doesn't have the driver" we start saying "Creative isn't allowing a Linux driver to be created", "nVidia is creating their own closed driver", "Broadcom still has a stick up their ass about Linux drivers", etc? Blame where blame is due. - sirhomer, on 10/10/2007, -8/+16Linux supports more computer architectures then any other operating system in existence. If it has a microprocessor, you can likely get Linux to run on it.
- suppressingfire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Let's be honest. Have you tried Linux, or are you talking from some preconception? My wife doesn't use the command line (when she sees me using it, she calls it "the black box") and she uses Linux every day.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -8/+16Complain to the makers of the hardware, they're the ones ignoring your choice of platform.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8*As long as said processor has a Memory Management Unit. Else you're relegated to running eCos or uCLinux.
- metalica77, on 10/10/2007, -8/+16I can't get my Netgear Card to work under linux it's *****
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3197478#post3197478
come there and HELP ME - nwmcsween, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10Dear whinny computer inept people:
A computer is a complex machine if you can't recognize that promptly 1. pick up computer 2. walk to garbage 3. throw away. - ralph123, on 10/10/2007, -5/+12Tell this to all the people having driver problems with Vista...
- WhiteIce89, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9Didn't you just prove my points right?
- shrewduser, on 10/10/2007, -23/+30a lot of my devices (dsl modems, sound cards, pci this and that) work much better under linux.... better drivers :)
- monkbone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6My HP laser printer works in Mac OS X and Linux out of the box. However, I can't use it in windows because I'd have to install all of HPs crapware. Hardware (an old CD burner) that stops being recognized by Windows still works in Linux.
- EXreaction, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Or Steve
*ducks* - spikes, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Don't be so full of it, SATA optical drives are seen no differently than SATA hard disks. I been using SATA dvd writers in every possible way for ages in Linux. Try passing some parameters to the boot loader to workaround any issues with drive detection.
- suppressingfire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6But chances are, it works out of the box in an recent release of Ubuntu or OpenSuse or Fedora.
- JelleK, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8http://duggmirror.com/linux_unix/Linux_Hardware_Support_Better_Than_Windows/
- lengau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Tell me when I can (legally) build my own Mac.
- jewisharific, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I'd never thought of it that way. Very well said.
- suppressingfire, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7"My sound card is completely nonfunctional in Linux (not some ancient card either, it's an X-Fi ExtremeMusic), the NVIDIA video card drivers aren't perfect either."
Of course. It's the new stuff that has the hardest time being supported. It's the old stuff that is better supported on Linux because the drivers are kept up to date because they're all maintained in one place, instead of inside each company's proprietary silo. What's more, manufacturers come and go, and when they go, they don't update their drivers to work in new versions of windows. But your friendly neighborhood linux developer will keep it updated and working. - JiaoYang, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Work much better? What, can your DSL modem make you a sandwich with your precious linux drivers? Fact is, if it works, it works and pretty much everything works in Windows XP and up. Linux does not support my video card, or my wireless card out of the box (1 year old laptop). I would much rather it just work without having to hack around than have it work "better."
- ralph123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5"Linux does own as a server though, not as a desktop, and hopefully NEVER as a desktop."
Why? Would it be frightening to you if people had a choice? - ProfBagelwood, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Worship? Nah, but giving a little respect to Linus Torvalds is better than giving two hundred bucks to Bill.
- Canute, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Here's the problem. In Windows, even though Microsoft doesn't ship the drivers, it's not a problem going to their support site and downloading a driver. If you are lucky with Linux (which you actually are with a lot of devices), you won't have to do a single thing. However, if you have some kind of hardware that isn't supported by open source drivers, installing them can be a pain in the ass. Dealing with ndiswrapper for example. Not that this is Linux's fault.
- deadbaby, on 10/10/2007, -5/+10I'm glad someone finally had the guts to say it. Everytime I do a fresh Windows install (which is, let's face it, a very common task) I end up with a Device Manager full of yellow question marks. Worse yet, sometimes I am stuck digging out an archaic floppy drive + disk so I can install onto a RAID or SATA controller. And let's not forget all the abandoned hardware out there -- I have dozens of PCI cards (still useful and 100% functional) that don't have Windows XP or Vista drivers much less 64bit drivers.
- PetroSan, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8lol, if all you do is use what's included in the bare-bones software with the OS you can use only the GUI. but if you want to actually install something that isn't in the pretty little package manager, you NEED to use terminal. Also, try using external DVD players, that's a hoot.
- Irishian88J, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Linux is better than windows somwtimes. But i cant ever seem to get my Wi-fi card on my laptop to work with it.
- etnu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Quit using such a ***** ***** distro if you find yourself being forced to do things through the terminal.
I'll accept the argument that the windows desktop is better than the common open source desktops (KDE and Gnome, although I generally prefer Gnome over any windows desktop), but not by much.
Linux isn't popular on the desktop for a few simple reasons:
- It doesn't come with the computer (DUH!)
- Newer hardware support is lacking.
Photoshop is irrelevant -- less than 1% of all computer users will ever use photoshop. It costs more to buy than most people spend on their entire PC in the first place.
Games can be relevant, but only if we're talking about the minority of users who primarily game on PCs, which is less than 30 million people by most estimates, out of over 700 million computer users worldwide. Hardly a significant number, and even less significant now that most video game developers have started abandoning PC gaming in favor of consoles.
For the majority of users, you could give them an ubuntu installation with open office, firefox, an IM client, support for their digital camera / camcorder, and mp3 ripping / playback and they wouldn't miss windows.
You people who think that windows market dominance has anything to do with niche applications like Photoshop or other high end professional tools are extremely out of touch with what ordinary people use their computers for. 90% of windows licenses are sold with new computers, and and virtually all new computers are sold with it. It doesn't take a software engineer to figure out why windows has such a huge market share given that situation.
What people should be questioning is why windows has such good vendor support. The most obvious answer here is "support". Until Dell, HP, and all the rest agree to support linux (even if it's only one or two specific distros), you won't see much by way of desktop support.You could always pay Red Hat for desktop support, but by that time you're going to have the classic "hardware vs. software" arguments, and you're paying more than you paid for windows anyway.
Note: Microsoft's direct supportis really *****. They shove the real support burden onto the shoulders of PC manufacturers, ISPs, and retail outlets. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Well I use vista and I've had a lot of hardware require me to go get drivers (not that this was a difficult task), however my PC is generally upgraded to the latest and greatest every 4-6 months so this is totally accepted.
Now, were I to be running linux, the damn drivers not only wouldn't be available on the install disk, but they certainly wouldn't be available from the manufacturer either. - lengau, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Okay, so when I have access to one (1) machine and it doesn't recognize my generic it's-from-1999 PCI Ethernet card, what do I do?
1. Boot up Linux LiveCD.
2. Spend literally hours trying to find the Windows drivers for this card online
3. Download the drivers
4. Boot into Windows and try to install the drivers, only to find that they don't work
5. Rinse, repeat until working drivers are found. - mikedoth, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4If it's Broadcom (crap), just use Ndiswrapper. Just don't blame Linux dev's for a manufacturer's lack of drivers.
- verevi, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7My HP drivers on Linux are a bazillion times better that those on my wife's XP PC. What a bloated piece of crap. The linux drivers were fast and easy to setup and work freakin' great.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I wish I could digg that up more than one.
- mmmiiikkkeee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4for a lot of hardware in linux its like what you said except without the "pop in a driver CD and two clicks later".. its just works. but i do agree the author is full of *****... "ati video cards", "brodcom wifi" and nots of scanners just don't work perfectly for every thing(plus more...). i think he was aiming at the out of the box(with no cd's/downloads needed but still its not true)
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